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Cheltenham Festival Statistics | Willie Mullins and mares including Quevega and Annie Power
In the first of a weekly series leading up to the Cheltenham Festival, Adam Houghton reveals a key stat to keep in mind.
KEY STAT
15/21 - the number of races restricted to mares at the Cheltenham Festival won by trainer Willie Mullins
Willie Mullins won the Leading Trainer Award at the Cheltenham Festival for an eighth time in 2021, finishing the week with a total of six winners. That tally was matched by Henry de Bromhead, but the tiebreaker comfortably went the way of Mullins, who saddled more second-place finishers by a score of seven to three.
The most successful trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival with 78 winners, Mullins has saddled at least three at the fixture in every year since 2011, the first time he won the Leading Trainer Award.
Since then, it’s become almost an inevitably that Mullins will leave Cheltenham each year with a hatful of winners, with the pinnacle coming in 2015 when his haul numbered eight, a joint record for the most winners at a single meeting.
One significant anomaly in 2021 was the fact that Mullins won only one of the three races restricted to mares at the Cheltenham Festival, a division he had previously dominated – both at the Festival and in general – for over a decade.
It shouldn’t be underestimated just how pivotal mares have been to Mullins’ success at the Festival over the years. There is sure to always be at least one who has a special place in his heart in the shape of Tourist Attraction, who provided her trainer with a very first winner at the meeting when landing the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle in 1995.
Mullins has won another 18 races at the Festival with mares in the interim, with every victory bar that of Tourist Attraction coming since 2009. So, that means that out of the 66 Cheltenham Festival winners Mullins trained between 2009 and 2021, around 27% of them were mares.
Of course, it makes perfect sense that Mullins has been more prolific in this area since 2009 as it was just the year before that the first race restricted to mares – the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle – had been introduced at the Cheltenham Festival.
After the success of the Donald McCain-trained Whiteoak in the inaugural edition, Mullins went on to win the Mares’ Hurdle for the next eight years in a row, with the first six of those victories all being achieved with the same horse – Quevega.
Incidentally, no other horse either before or after has won six times at the Cheltenham Festival, though Tiger Roll will have the opportunity to match that feat if he lines up in the Cross Country Chase less than nine weeks from now.
Mullins had another special mare coming through the ranks at the time of Quevega’s final Cheltenham win in 2014, but a misjudgment at the final flight famously cost Annie Power when she attempted to pick up where Quevega left off in the Mares’ Hurdle the following year.
Seemingly in full control at the time of her fall, Annie Power’s exit must have had Mullins cursing his luck until it dawned on him that the horse left in front was another of his own in the shape of Glens Melody, a very smart mare in her own right who clung on by a head to go one place better than when chasing home Quevega 12 months earlier.
There was no such drama in 2016 as Vroum Vroum Mag justified odds of 6/4-on with the minimum of fuss, her victory coming just 40 minutes after Annie Power had won the Champion Hurdle, an even more poignant moment for her connections given what had happened the previous year.
Mullins is clearly no stranger to big-race success at the Cheltenham Festival, but it’s fair to say that Annie Power’s Champion Hurdle win was probably as special as any of them as she became the first of her sex to win the race since Flakey Dove in 1994.
Given the dominance Mullins enjoyed in the Mares’ Hurdle in the early days, it’s perhaps a surprise that he has won only one of the last five editions, that triumph coming courtesy of Benie des Dieux in 2018.
It might appear that Mullins has relaxed his grip on the Mares’ Hurdle crown in recent years, but it’s worth pointing out that even when he hasn’t trained the winner his runners have still had a big say in proceedings in some shape or form.
For context, Mullins saddled the second-place finisher in all four editions he didn’t win between 2017 and 2021, and Benie des Dieux probably would have won the race again but for falling at the last in 2019, coming down in almost identical fashion to Annie Power four years earlier.
Benie des Dieux was sent off the odds-on favourite for the Mares’ Hurdle again in 2020, but this time it was her turn to find one too good. However, there was certainly no shame in that effort given that the horse who beat her was a certain Honeysuckle, whose unbeaten record under Rules now spans 13 races, including last year’s Champion Hurdle.
So, overall Mullins has won nine of the 14 renewals of the Mares’ Hurdle to have been staged so far, but we still need to account for another eight wins for Mullins-trained mares at the Cheltenham Festival since 2009.
Relegate and Burning Victory both deserve a special mention as the only other mares trained by Mullins to have emulated Tourist Attraction and Annie Power by winning races against the males at the Cheltenham Festival.
Relegate led home a one-two-three for the stable in the Champion Bumper in 2018, while Burning Victory took advantage of Goshen’s dramatic exit at the final flight to win the Triumph Hurdle in 2020.
The Champion Bumper is the prize Mullins has won more than any other at the Cheltenham Festival – Sir Gerhard gave the trainer a record eleventh victory in the race in 2021 – but the race in which he has been most dominant has been the Dawn Run Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle.
It was always a race that Mullins would be keen to win given who it was named after, the great Dawn Run who, trained by Willie’s father Paddy, was the last mare to win the Champion Hurdle before Flakey Dove and Annie Power in 1984. For good measure, Dawn Run also won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1986, in the process becoming the first and only horse to ever complete the double.
Mullins remarkably won the first five renewals of the Dawn Run. He had clearly targeted the race with pinpoint precision in the first three years as Limini (2016), Let’s Dance (2017) and Laurina (2018) all justified favouritism at short odds, but even the trainer himself would have struggled to pick the best of his seven runners in the 2019 renewal. In the event, it was 50/1-shot Eglantine du Seuil who came out on top, beating stablemate Concertista – who returned an SP of 66/1 on hurdling debut – by a short head.
Concertista was still a maiden over hurdles when returning for the 2020 edition of the Dawn Run, but she proved better than ever back at Cheltenham to put that right in devastating fashion, forging 12 lengths clear to make it five wins in a row in the race for Mullins, who also saddled the runner-up Dolcita, fourth Yukon Lil and fifth Colreevy, all talented hurdlers in their own right.
Aside from Vroum Vroum Mag and Benie des Dieux, who both won good races over fences prior to their Festival heroics, the majority of the best mares trained by Mullins have been kept over hurdles. However, that is perhaps more likely to change nowadays after the introduction of the Liberthine Mares’ Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, a race run for the first time in 2021.
As if we expected anything else, Mullins found himself with a monopoly on the inaugural edition of the Mares’ Chase last year as Colreevy, a total revelation after embarking on a chasing career, fought out a thrilling finish with stablemate Elimay, ultimately getting the verdict by half a length. Mullins, who saddled four of the 11 runners, was also responsible for the fourth Salsaretta.
Mullins may not have won the Mares’ Hurdle or the Dawn Run last year, but a quick look at the ante-post betting for the three races limited to mares at the 2022 Cheltenham Festival suggests there is every chance his dominance in this division will quickly be restored.
First up is the Mares’ Hurdle in which Mullins has three of the first eight in the betting with Sky Bet. The pick of them looks to be Stormy Ireland (151), whose previous appearances in the race have seen her finish second in 2019 and fifth in 2020. She got back to winning ways in the Relkeel Hurdle at Cheltenham last time and a repeat of her best form would put her right in the mix in what looks likely to be no more than an average renewal.
In the Dawn Run, Allegorie de Vassy (122p), Dinoblue (125p), Brandy Love (130P), Statuaire (133p) and Grangee (130p) all feature prominently in the betting for Mullins.
A narrow winner of the Royal Bond Novices’ Hurdle at Fairyhouse in November, Statuaire has achieved the most on Timeform ratings as things stand, but the others are all open to more improvement to one extent or another.
Finally, Elimay (152) could attempt to go one place better than last year in the Mares’ Chase, but Concertista (137p) has the potential to emerge as the leading contender for her stable this time. Yet to finish out of the first two in three appearances at the Cheltenham Festival – she was beaten just a head into second behind Black Tears in last year’s Mares’ Hurdle – Concertista has taken really well to chasing this season with a pair of comfortable Grade Two wins at Cork and Limerick.
Concertista is likely to progress further over fences and the Mares’ Chase looks the obvious target as she seeks her second victory at the Festival. It would be a notable achievement as, for all the talented mares Mullins has trained over the years, Quevega remains the only one to have won more than once at the meeting.
Willie Mullins-trained mares to have won at the Cheltenham Festival
- 1995 - Tourist Attraction (Supreme Novices' Hurdle)
- 2009 - Quevega (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2010 - Quevega (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2011 - Quevega (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2012 - Quevega (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2013 - Quevega (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2014 - Quevega (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2015 - Glens Melody (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2016 - Annie Power (Champion Hurdle)
- 2016 - Vroum Vroum Mag (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2016 - Limini (Dawn Run Mares' Novices' Hurdle)
- 2017 - Let's Dance (Dawn Run Mares' Novices' Hurdle)
- 2018 - Benie des Dieux (David Nicholson Mares' Hurdle)
- 2018 - Relegate (Champion Bumper)
- 2018 - Laurina (Dawn Run Mares' Novices' Hurdle)
- 2019 - Eglantine du Seuil (Dawn Run Mares' Novices' Hurdle)
- 2020 - Concertista (Dawn Run Mares' Novices' Hurdle)
- 2020 - Burning Victory (Triumph Hurdle)
- 2021 - Colreevy (Liberthine Mares' Chase)
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